Lower-bounded facility location

Abstract

We study the lower-bounded facility location problem which generalizes the classical uncapacitated facility location problem in that it comes with lower bound constraints for the number of clients assigned to a facility in the case that this facility is opened. This problem was introduced independently in the papers by Karger and Minkoff [2000] and by Guha et al. [2000], both of which give bicriteria approximation algorithms for it. These bicriteria algorithms come within a constant factor of the optimal solution cost, but they also violate the lower bound constraints by a constant factor. Our result in this article is the first true approximation algorithm for the lower-bounded facility location problem which respects the lower bound constraints and achieves a constant approximation ratio for the objective function. The main technical idea for the design of the algorithm is a reduction to the capacitated facility location problem, which has known constant-factor approximation algorithms.